


distinct, but equally present

by woodlands



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Hopeful Ending, M/M, [kronk voice] my shoulder angels!, except it’s flint and mcgraw and they’re kind of feral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27274840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodlands/pseuds/woodlands
Summary: “Some days I wish hehadfound a way to do away with you,” McGraw tells Flint.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton
Comments: 17
Kudos: 40





	distinct, but equally present

**Author's Note:**

> yes this is based off of a meme i made in which flint and mcgraw are ~~kronk’s~~ james’ shoulder angels. what of it.
> 
> really struggled to stop myself from titling this “the men inside me” because deep down i’m just a pile of arrested development jokes in a trench coat.

Flint is in the armchair, filing his teeth. “Just kill the man and be done with it,” he says.

James glances at him sidelong. “And what do you propose I do when the crew finds him missing? Talk my way out of it?”

Flint shrugs.

“We ought to go ashore,” McGraw says. He doesn’t like the cabin. 

The Walrus is docked in Nassau for the night, the men scattered, seeking as much pleasure as can be bought with their share of the most recent prize. He’s stayed on board, disinterested in the bawdy hubbub of a Nassau evening. But it’s true that he’s made enemies on this ship, and the skeleton crew manning it tonight isn’t happy about doing so. 

“Her house is empty,” McGraw points out. He’s undone his hair and it tumbles down over his shoulders, lush compared to Flint’s bare scalp. Thomas had loved his hair. So had Miranda. 

They all stare mutinously at one another, thinking about her, the various roles they’ve all played. McGraw is jealous of Flint, James knows, of her hands on him, the way her fingers felt when she molded him from clay, the way her anger tastes like blood in his mouth. There is more of Miranda in Flint than McGraw can bear, and it makes him resentful, snappish. Flint, as always, bites back. 

They’re both jealous of James, but for entirely different reasons. 

He sighs. “I ought to visit.”

“If you’re thinking about that fucking painting—“ McGraw spits out suddenly, mood soured. On the other side of the cabin, Flint’s hackles are up, too. They get like this, sometimes. 

James shakes his head. It isn’t Thomas in the painting, not really. The artist wouldn’t have known that James and Miranda would need something to cling to, in their grief. 

He’s thought about slicing through it, keeping just the half with Miranda, whose likeness is good. It would feel sweet, Flint has suggested, the way it felt sweet to bite into Alfred Hamilton with his blade. But the thought of separating Miranda again from her husband, no matter how poorly drawn, makes bile rise in his throat. So the painting stayed covered and pushed behind the armoire for years. 

There isn’t much of value in the house. Neither of them were happy there. But, he thinks, perhaps some of the books. Or something of hers, a dress, a glove—perhaps the lingering scent of her perfume. 

“Please.” Flint is the one who asks for it out loud, up and out of the chair, climbing over the desk to perch over him, the lantern swinging behind his head when James looks up at him. He wants to run his fingers over the muslin of her dresses, James can tell. “Just—please.”

So he goes. The house has been left untouched, the legend of Captain Flint enough to keep the neighbors at bay. There’s a plate, washed, left to dry by the sink. A book by the bed with a slip of paper tucked into the pages to keep the spot. The sheets, when he peels them back, still smell like her. McGraw pulls the blanket from where she’d laid it over the chair, wraps it around himself. 

James curls up on the bed and wishes, not for the first time, that he’d died that day in Charles Town, too. They would have let him swing, buried McGraw in Miranda’s coffin, pushed Flint out to sea. Good riddance.

—

Flint and McGraw disappear. They’re gone just long enough for James to kill Dooley, to hand his freedom to Silver. 

He doesn’t notice their absence until Silver trains his pistol at his chest. He’s always been lonely, he knows, but suddenly, for the first time in a long time, he feels alone. 

“Don’t,” he hisses, when they reappear. 

Neither says a word. They stand there, side-by-side, two spectres, watching him plead for his life. 

—

Silver thinks he’s killed Flint. 

Flint thinks it’s the funniest fucking shit he’s ever heard. 

The letter James is holding is from Madi Scott, routed through Port Royal and then Boston before it landed on Oglethorpe’s desk. It had been opened and read by the time James got his hands on it. 

“Some days I wish he _had_ found a way to do away with you,” McGraw tells Flint. He’s taken to wearing layers lately, two waistcoats and multiple coats, a grey gentleman’s wig in a cheap imitation of the peruke Thomas wore in London, protection against the shock of having Thomas returned only to find him changed, too. James wants to do the same, some days, when Thomas flinches from him out of a habit James doesn’t recognize.

Flint snarls, launches himself at McGraw. It’s no use trying to intervene. James goes back to reading the letter while they come to blows, furious with one another. McGraw fights like a Navy man, which is why he always loses, unable or unwilling to adapt his fighting style, even after all these years. Whereas Flint has that same knowledge written on his bones and a grittier, ungentlemanly way of fighting tattooed onto his skin. 

Thomas puts the book down on the rough-hewn table by the bed and folds his hands over his belly. He might have asked about the contents of the letter, once upon a time, but he doesn’t now. Instead, he waits for James to offer it up. They don’t take from one another. They just—wait. 

McGraw tears away from Flint, panting and furious, defeated. The blood on both their hands is someone else’s.

“If I go, we all go,” Flint reminds him, grinning, voice hoarse like he’s been screaming. Maybe he has. Maybe they all have.

—

When they break out of the plantation, McGraw fights more violently and furiously than he ever has before. Flint stays back, a hand on a knife at his hip. He’s not so good in the bright sun these days. He’d wanted to burn the plantation down, so, James thinks, perhaps this is a good thing. 

Thomas is covered in blood. McGraw hisses, worried, but it’s clear it’s not his own. 

“I’ve never seen you fight, not like this,” Thomas realizes aloud, standing patiently while James checks him over. McGraw recoils, but there is no judgment in Thomas’ voice. “You’ve come a long way from—“ He goes no further. 

James does his remembering for him: he and Miranda had taught McGraw to fence— hours in the grand halls of the Hamilton residence, the sounds of their épées and laughter echoing on the stones. Miranda with her skirts tied up, Thomas in his shirtsleeves. McGraw, is the early days, doing his best not to look. 

They discover, once James has relieved the guards of their weapons and untied two horses from the gate, that Thomas is still an excellent horseman, though it’s been years and leagues and traumas since last he rode. James has not improved. 

The unadulterated glee on Thomas’ face as they race down the road leading away from their prison, the wind in his short hair and the sun on his face—it lights up inside James like a house ablaze.

McGraw whispers urgently in James’ ear as they go: “Keep up. Don’t let him get too far ahead. Don’t you dare lose him.”

The road takes them back to the sea. 

—

“Sometimes I think I’m two entirely different people,” Thomas says, pressed close in the tiny bed. He tilts his head back a little so he can see James’ face in the midnight gloom. “I feel as if there is a before and an after, two distinct but equally present personalities within me. I struggle to make sense of it. It’s a little strange, isn’t it?”

The bed is small, but somehow Flint and McGraw always manage to squeeze in with them. It might once have felt oppressive, but it doesn’t now. He wonders if Thomas can feel them, pressed in on all sides, desperate to be close.

James closes his eyes. “No,” he whispers, kissing Thomas on the forehead sleepily, picturing it, two more pressed in here with them, “No. I don’t find that strange at all.”


End file.
